What Torture Actually Looks Like

April 27, 2009

Please believe me: I am not trying to divert attention from our own torture scandal that would be better understood if it were somehow extracted from the partisan wars.

But a TNR staffer called my attention to the horrific story of the relentless agony imposed on a poor Afghan grain dealer by a princeling in the royal house of Abu Dhabi, the son of the late president of the United Arab Emirates. Sheikh Issa Bin Zayed Al Nahyen had apparently tortured many people before he began to torment his partner Bassam Nabulsi, an American citizen by the way, who kept records and film tapes for the shiekh or of the sheikh, among them visuals that appear to be (shall we say?) extremely embarrassing.

Now, Nabulsi does not himself come across as an especially upright guy. But Issa is a maniac, protected by his family which happens to be the state. So, with its protection, he went after the Afghan merchant. He had him beaten, whipped, electrocuted, and run over by an SUV, a big gas guzzler in a big oil state. He even poured salt in his wounds. But with this video, it is Nabulsi who has Issa quite literally by the balls.

Abu Dhabi happens to be the "civilized" state in the U.A.E. Civilized, indeed. After all, it has branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim right there, open to the public, the native public which comes but once, the foreign public which is no longer there.

Nabulsi has now sued the royal in Federal Court in Houston. So who does the shiekh hire as his attorney? Baker Botts, James Baker's law firm, Baker being the producer of so many travesties, including the taking of the presidency from the will of the American people. And Issa's particular lawyer? Daryl Bristow who was one of George Bush's lawyers in Florida in 2000. What a crowd!